In the Claws of the Eagle (8 page)

Erich woke from a dream of family picnics, but the campfire smell persisted. He sniffed, and turned on his bedside light. A thin haze circled the shade. He let his eyes follow his nose upwards towards the skylight. Smoke was gently cascading into the room. He threw back his sheet, jumped for the ledge of the skylight and pulled himself up. He was twelve and lithe and active. Resting his chin on his hands, he peered down into the garden.

The smell wasn’t from Grandpa Veit’s bonfire. He looked left and saw a sudden flicker of red light illuminate the
underside
of a rising column of smoke. His arms went rigid; he hung for a second longer to be sure of his bearings, and then dropped back into the room, pulled on his shorts, grabbed a shirt and ran barefoot down the stairs.

‘Fire! Papa … fire; the sawmill is on fire!’ The doors to the two bedrooms opened together. Grandpa Veit in his nightshirt, bleared and confused, started shouting loudly for water. Father, more practically, was pulling on his trousers. He reached into his pocket, took out some groschen and pressed the small coins into Erich’s hand. Against the rising volume of Grandpa Veit’s military-style commands, he shouted to Erich.

‘To the telephone, Erich. First the Fire Brigade, that’s free,
then Herr Solomons. The operator will know his number. Run! I’ll follow.’

At that moment Erich felt a surge of pride in his father so strong that he wanted to give him a hug. Instead he pelted down the road to the public telephone, and wound the handle until it nearly came off in his hand. At first the operator was reluctant to take orders from a boy, but when he said, ‘Well, you tell Herr Solomons then!’ she realized it wasn’t a hoax.

Erich arrived at the fire almost as soon as his father.

‘Papa!’ he said. ‘They’re coming.’ Already they could hear the clang of the bell in the distance. The fire glowed
ominously
, outlining the buildings facing on to the road. Father had keys to the iron gates of the yard and was opening them in anticipation.

‘Erich,’ he said. ‘Run to Herr Bookmann, the yard
supervisor
. He knows where all the men live. Do as he says.’

For the next half hour Erich ran and ran … and ran again, knocking on doors, throwing stones at windows, and shouting through letterboxes.

‘The sawmill’s on fire, come and help!’

He didn’t wait to explain; the glow against the sky told the startled men all they needed to know. When he arrived back at the sawmill it was like a scene out of hell. The fire engine was pumping curved jets of water in through the windows of Father’s office and dousing the sawing-sheds behind. Erich noticed that someone had painted a yellow star on the door. As he looked, and wondered what it meant, flames burst through the cracks and flickered around the new paint. A line of men had formed a chain, passing buckets of water to douse the fire as it tried to encroach on the piles of new-sawn timber. Erich could see his father, his face ruddy in the fire’s glow, directing operations, picking up fallen buckets, filling gaps in the chain at need.

‘You take it easy, sir … leave it to us,’ one of the workers cautioned him, but Father appeared not to hear. A motorcar had arrived; Herr Solomons was there. Erich ran towards him; ‘Father’s over there!’ Erich wanted everyone to see – Father was saving the yard!

At that moment everything seemed to stop. The chain of buckets faltered and the fire gave a great gasp as part of the roof fell in. Erich turned to see the men dropping their buckets and running towards Father, hands reaching out too late to catch his fall. They closed around him. Erich ran and beat his way through the encircling men. One of them had a torch, and as Erich watched, he turned its pale beam on Father’s face, robbing it of the fire’s glow. Father’s face was blue, just as he had seen it for a moment in Mother’s painting. The crowd was parting to let Herr Solomons through.

‘Franz!’ He said anxiously, using Mr Hoffman’s first name for the first time. ‘We will get you a doctor!’

Father shook his head. ‘The fire sir, the fire!’, he murmured.

‘Don’t you worry, my friend. You have done a hero’s work, and what is insurance for?’ He promptly organised for Father to be carried home. Later, when the fire was under control, he came and stayed until the doctor had declared Father to be out of danger.

Erich watched the movements of the adults through the open door of sitting room. He felt detached, in a misery that was all his own. They were like actors entering a set, saying their lines, and then leaving it again. Mother, tousled but
beautiful
, still in her dressing gown, emerged with the doctor. Herr Solomons, holding his hat, waited anxiously for the prognosis. Grandpa Veit, now partly dressed, appeared, saw Herr
Solomons
, and retreated into his room again, aiming a stage grimace towards Erich. Eventually the doctor left, with reassurances to them that Father would be all right with a little rest.

Herr Solomons was the last to leave. At the door he turned and said, ‘Anything, Frau Hoffman, anything, you just have to ask.’ The door closed behind him. As if on cue, Grandpa Veit appeared from his room, shaking with apparent rage, and
confronted
Mother.

‘Why did you let him go?’ he snapped.

‘Who? The doctor?’

‘No, you stupid woman. Franz. You know he’s not fit. You could have killed him.’

‘Well, who should I have sent? Erich?’

‘No, me. I’d have sorted out that bloody Jew.’

‘You! If I remember rightly, you were standing here in your nightshirt shouting for water! Go back to bed, old man, and stop blaming me. I have Franz to tend to.’ At that Sabine went into their bedroom and all but slammed the door.

Erich closed his eyes and held his breath, willing his
grandfather
to turn about and go back into his room, but Veit had been stood up to, he had not had the last word, and he didn’t like it. Erich heard the shuffle of his coming.

‘It was your mother’s fault. She’s responsible, you know.’

Erich kept his eyes closed. This wasn’t the first time Grandpa had blamed Mother when Father had one of his attacks. What did he mean about Mother being responsible? Responsible for what?

Veit, pleased with his ambiguity, now turned his attention to the consequences of the fire. ‘So the timber yard is gone? That will be the end of your father’s job. She’ll have to go out to work now; no more messing about with paints.’

Oh, go back to bed, old man
, Erich thought. But Veit wasn’t finished.

‘Solomons did it on purpose, you know – the fire. It’s all part of their conspiracy to bring the country, and our civilisation, to its knees.’

‘But why would he burn his own sawmills?’ Erich queried.

Viet bent down and his voice sounded hot in Erich’s ear. ‘
Insurance
, boy. Destroy the industry, make twenty honest men jobless, collect the insurance, and laugh all the way to the bank.’

Erich liked Herr Solomons, and he just didn’t want to know about this. Herr Solomons’s words to Father had been said out of kindness, he was sure. He remembered the yellow paint on the door: the Star of David, that’s what it was. He had heard how it had been painted on other buildings when they were wrecked by the right-wing mobs that were becoming commonplace.

‘But Grandpa,’ he said. ‘Somebody had painted a yellow star on the door like they do when they attack Jewish premises. I saw it myself.’

‘Oh no! Don’t you be fooled by that, lad. They do it
themselves
; just to make it look like it was sabotage. They don’t want to be charged with firing their own premises, do they?’

Erich was in bed, but he wasn’t dreaming this time. His
nightmare
was live: a rollercoaster that had no sooner completed one terrifying cycle than it would start all over again. Father would be out of a job; Mother would have to go out to work instead; he would deliver papers like Hans in school. Herr Solomons was kind – Mother liked him; Herr Solomons was evil – Grandpa said so. What had Mother done to make Father sick? He hated Grandpa with all his heart, but … there were Mother’s pictures – surely art was supposed to be beautiful, not terrifying. Herr Solomons liked her pictures; he had started the fire. If he hadn’t, who had? And he would be back for another stomach-churning round.

Erich sat up in bed. He had to do something to quiet the
turmoil in his mind. Action, that’s what he needed. Something, anything to stop worrying about uncertainties, to hone himself for some great endeavour. His vision stopped short of shining armour, but only just. He kicked the sheet off and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He dressed quickly, choosing a dark top. He pulled his lederhosen up by their braces, and tied a pair of black rubber-soled shoes about his neck. He turned the key in the door of his bedroom so that they’d think he was asleep if they came up, walked to where he could stand directly under the skylight and jumped.

He stood for a moment beside the garden shed, listening. Nothing moved, no lights in the house, the neighbour’s dog hadn’t barked. He knew the path through the garden well enough, the only obstacle turned out to be his grandfather’s wheelbarrow. He rubbed his thigh and cursed the old man quietly. A well-used path led up beside the vineyard. If he looked at it directly, it wasn’t there, but if he looked a little to one side he found he could see it, a lighter density in the black about him. His night vision was improving and as it did so the darkness began to reveal other dimensions. It was as if objects in the dark carried an almost tactile aura about them. He flinched away from a branch that overhung the path; he hadn’t seen it, but yet had known it was there. He reached a stile and crossed it, stepping onto a wider path, one of the numerous
Wander Wege
or wanderer’s paths that lace the Vienna Woods.

This was familiar territory. He had walked all these paths a hundred times: as an explorer (intrepid), as an Indian (swift and silent), as a cowboy (easy in his saddle, finger on trigger). Tonight however was for real. He put his feet down as silently as possible; if he met someone he wanted to be the first to know. When a leaf rustled, he froze, pulse racing. It was so silent that he could hear the hiss of his own blood in his ears. Snakes, they said, would lie on the paths enjoying the
lingering warmth of day. It was amazing how easily the mind turned even the most modest stick into a silent menace. He decided to put on his shoes.

He could see the path clearly now. As he leaned into the slope, climbing above the reek of the still smouldering timber yard, he noticed the air freshening. Erich was aiming for the old ruins from where he could get a view over the town below. The trees were thinning about him now and the high cloud was breaking up, allowing scatters of stars to shine through. The path widened here, this was a popular place and there was a circle of stones where someone had lit a fire. It had been carefully banked over. He laid a hand on the top stone; it was still warm. He looked about. Whoever had been here had gone. He walked over to the edge of the clearing and looked out over the lights of the town, pallid in contrast to the ruby glow from the embers of the timber yard. Far to his left the sky was lit from underneath by the lights of Vienna itself. A string of bright beads extending towards him picked out the towns and villages at the foot of the wooded hills.

‘
Guten Morgen
,’ the voice came from only inches behind him. Erich stiffened but did not turn. Whoever it was had come up to him without a sound.

‘It’s still night,’ he corrected.

‘You missed the best of it.’

‘What?’

‘The fire down there, it looked spectacular from up here.’ Erich tried to size up the voice behind him. It was a boy’s voice but older than his; it had already broken. The voice came from above him, so the boy was taller.

‘It looked spectacular from down there too.’

‘You were watching?’

‘No, trying to put it out.’

‘Why?’

‘My dad works … worked there.’

‘But you’re not a Jew!’ It was a statement.

‘How do you know?’

‘What! With that thatch of fair hair?’ The boy behind him laughed. For some reason Erich felt jealous of that laugh. It was relaxed … assured. Perhaps one day he would be able to laugh like that. He realised also that perhaps the boy was right about it being morning. The palest of light was beginning to fill in panels of darkness about him. Erich stepped to one side before he turned to face his companion. He had been right about his height, what he hadn’t expected was to find himself looking into a face that could have been his own, given a year or two in the difference. The same thought must have struck them both. The older boy recovered first saying with a laugh, ‘You need a haircut.’ He held out a hand. ‘Klaus,’ he said
introducing
himself.

Erich took his hand. ‘Erich,’ he said, and the older boy silently clicked his bare heels.

‘Come on over. We are camped in the ruins. We won’t wake the others, they are just lads, but like you, they have been busy tonight. There will be life in the fire if we uncover it, and we can talk.’ Erich watched as the boy uncovered the coals and swiftly fed it twigs until a bright flame danced. Immediately the remaining darkness closed in around them, leaving them to examine each other across the flames. Erich noticed that Klaus was wearing a type of uniform that he hadn’t seen before.